An End to my Dreams.......????????

It's the weirdest thing, but lately, my weird and wonderful dreams just seem to have all of a sudden... stopped.

And even odder, it's all since I started a completely new blog on the entirely unrelated real-life subject of the Prague dining scene ('knedliky' is Czech for dumplings, which when served up with pork and cabbage constitute the Czech equivalent to British fish & chips).

Could it be that all that nocturnal craziness was just my frustrated brain's way of telling me that I needed a new creative outlet?

Does all the mental energy that goes into the food blog by day somehow allow my subconscious to be more at rest by night?

Or is it just that, what with all these restaurants to review, I'm not staying in at home anymore drinking wine and eating cheese-laden pasta at 9 or 10 at night...?? ;-))

In some ways I'm sorry, but in others its admittedly a relief to have a subconscious (for now at least) at rest for a little while - it is actually quite exhausting to experience life as actively in your sleeping hours as you do when you're awake!

Am sure this won't be the last entry of my dream blog, and I will of course still write up if anything of particular nocturnal interest occurs - until then, however, please divert your attentions to 'Knedliky Etc' for the time being instead (though please don't let on it's me ;-)) ) and leave me finally to a good night's sleep!! ;-))

Come Dine with Me - Episode 4

Well, admittedly it's been a while since the last installment of my personal nocturnal 'Come Dine with Me' series, but luckily last night's belated episode more than made it up for it though, as for the first time in subconscious televisual history, 'Come Dine with Me' actually combined with 'The Apprentice' to deliver up the ultimate in competitive dining reality TV...

Basically, in the tried and tested format of 'The Apprentice', the legendary Sir Alan Sugar set two pre-selected teams (one of which included me as a member) a business task to complete in the course of an episode - in this case having each team prepare a four-course meal for a large group from scratch, an endeavor which ranged from the sourcing of quality ingredients at value prices to the choosing of appropriate menu options etc, before as a team collectively preparing, cooking and serving up the food to a ten-strong select panel of Sir Alan's personal business acquaintances. Unfortunately I was not designated Project Manager for this task, however, and ended up having to follow some other cretin's illogical menu choices - namely to serve omelettes as a main course for ten people, but with only me (equipped with just the one pan) appointed to cook them. Inevitably, this ended up with me desperately trying to chop up the fillings and fry the omelettes one by one at the last minute, knowing all the while that this was nothing more than a pointless exercise in sheer and utter futility imposed by some up-their-own-arse, full-of-shit, Donald Trump wannabe, 'Apprentice' contestant, who despite all their business bravado still lacked the basic common sense to know that it would of course take ages between starter and main to get out ten omelettes individually, and that by the time the time the tenth was done, the first eight or nine would already be stone cold...

Inevitably my team ended up losing the task (though not from want of sheer physical effort on my part), but I defended myself eloquently to Sir Alan, Nick and Margaret (a great loss to the real life version of the show, btw) by citing my original menu that had (on film) been blindly overruled by the puffed up Project Manager. In contrast to the PM's haphazard, ill-thought out menu plan, my options relied instead on both fresh, simple ingredients and sensible pre-prepartion: namely an easily pre-prepared, simple roast vegetable soup as a starter, followed by grilled goat's cheese salad on toasted ciabatta as a quick and easy second course, with a butternut squash and pancetta risotto (simple to prepare in bulk while the first two courses were being served) next as the main, before finally rounding off with a decadent chocolate cheesecake (again easily pre-prepared earlier in the afternoon) for dessert.

So that's one episode survived despite being on the losing room - just hope I survive the Boardroom in the next round!!!!!!!! Until then, Sir Alan Sugar's search for his Apprentice... continues.

Eighties Nostalgia...

Does anyone apart from me remember an eighties kids film called ‘D.A.R.Y.L.’ (short for ‘Data-Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform’)??? It starred the kid from ‘Neverending Story’, and was about a boy who thought he’d lost all memory of his previous existence, but later (much to his own surprise, presumably) actually turned out to be a cyborg at the centre of a top-secret government experiment into artificial intelligence and the capacity of machines to experience human emotion, in effect whether it was possible for an artificial android to become a “real boy”. Kind of like Pinocchio, but with robots.

Well, last night I dreamt I was a repeat experiment of the whole D.A.R.Y.L. saga, with myself not remembering anything of any previous existence, and therefore initially behaving in a totally unsocialised manner. However, while the Daryl child of the film betrayed his technological origins via the demonstration of Spock-like logic / mathematical genius / computer game expertise etc, I just basically ran riot, beating up the fellow siblings of my new adoptive family and just generally raising hell, until I eventually became socialized enough to act like a decent human being. Unlike the Daryl of the movie, however, who quickly learned to experience human emotions, I could only ever adapt to human life in an abstract moral sense, as opposed to developing any innate sense of feeling or humanity – in essence just an extreme manifestation of the generally “emotional crippled” (my mother’s words for my genetically repressed lineage) manner in which I currently live out my real-life existence… Not that it is any bad thing to think more with one’s head rather than heart I suppose, but still, it would be nice to at least have the choice…

Anyway moving back to happier territory, weren’t eighties films in general just great? They just don’t make them like the ‘Goonies’, ‘Karate Kid’, ‘Flight of the Navigator’, ‘Short Circuit’, ‘Dark Crystal’, ‘Big’, ‘Gremlins’, ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Back to the Future’ and of course ‘E.T.’ any more – though watching David Bowie in the ‘Labyrinth’ now as an adult, you quickly realize why your mum was always so uncharacteristically keen to sit down and watch with you… Wonder if the kids who played Atreyu and Bastian Balthazar Bux in the movie have even the remotest idea that the Czech version of the classic ‘Neverending Story’ song still plays in certain renowned Prague nightclubs plays to this day….????? ;-))))))))

Happy Families...

Last night I dreamed again of returning to university for my forgotten final year (in itself another recurrent dream), only to find my beloved Auntie Anne, Uncle Chris and all my step-siblings sitting in the college common room waiting for me, much to my surprise. I was naturally very touched that they'd all unexpectedly come together to pay me a visit, but at the same time was utterly mortified that they'd also apparently all been sitting there waiting for me to turn up the whole day. Promising I'd just dump my suitcase in my nearby student dorm and come right back down to join them, I heading up to my block, only to find out that, after so many years away, I couldn't remember any more where my old room was, and instead wound up getting myself well and truly lost in the Kafkaesque labyrinth of corridors and staircases that even in real life used to make up much of the old-school Cambridge halls of residences. All the time I was of course panicking that my relatives were all still waiting downstairs, and in the end by the time I did eventually make it back down again, only a patient Auntie Anne and Chris were left. But being two of the nicest and kindest people I know, they weren't cross with me at all, and instead took me out for a lovely dinner at some trendy new restaurant where we shared some lovely red wine and I had pork medallions on a bed of potato purée topped with a cranberry jus to eat. So all in all a happy ending to this one I guess! :-))

Snippets III

A few random recollections of recent nocturnal escapades:

• Going for an interview as Fraud Prevention manager at Ernst & Young, only - to my utter mortification - to bump into my current Dutch and Swedish colleagues who were there collaborating with my company on a joint Excel department. Had to beg them both not to tell our boss that I'd been for another interview elsewhere (not, by the way, that I am even thinking about moving at the moment...).
• Taking off from a private airfield in a small plane with my boss and all my colleagues, only to see a rocket launch and explode in mid-air, scattering a load of toxic phishing mails covered with poisonous yellow powder across the surrounding countryside, and having to organise a mass evacuation of the entire area.
• Going on a road trip with my beloved Michael Palin, who was waxing lyrical about his neo-geometric view of town planning and maximum utilisation of space / balance of urban and rural landscapes.
• Reluctantly going on a tacky beach holiday with family and wanting to stay in spa, but being dragged out into the hot sun and sticky sand anyway (both of which I find utterly bothersome - am more the alpine than the seaside type), where I shared the only bit of shade under a palm tree with some fat old German who kept perving me up.
• Relocating to the countryside as Sarah Jessica Parker (as in 'Did You Hear About the Morgans'), where I bailed hay and sat on a cliff ledge with some random old guy rehashing all the failings of our past relations.
• Running my hand over my stomach and trying to work out if it was concave or convex.

Auf der Flucht...

Strangely enough for an unfailingly law-abiding citizen (not out of any sense of innate morality, you understand, but just a base fear of getting caught), every once in a while I dream that I'm on the run from the law - usually due to a false accusation, abuse in the home, or just wanting to escape the demands of a relentlessly competitive society. The odd thing though is that without exception, rather than being panicked or fearful at the prospect of being tracked down and punished by the law, I actually find these dreams strangely liberating and exhilarating instead...

Last night, for example, I dreamt that myself (as a 13 year old) was on the run together with Dewey from 'Malcolm in the Middle', stopping off at a supermarket to shoplift up on provisions. Unfortunately in this case, Dewey's amateur attempts at petty theft got himself caught, with me as his presumed older sister being hauled up in front of the store manager to explain ourselves - in German of all languages. The kindly store manager clearly suspected there was something wrong with the scenario (namely that we might be two kids fending for ourselves etc), but I successfully managed to put her off the scent by (in German) persuading her that it was just a mistake on little Dewey's part, that I was perfectly ready and willing to pay (luckily I had a stash of presumably ill-gotten cash on me), and that we'd been to this particular shop many times before without causing a problem etc etc...

In the end she decided to let it go, however, leaving me and Dewey to run back to the car (once again presumably stolen, given that neither of us were old enough to drive) and take off, with myself being so utterly stressed out by the whole encounter that for once I let Dewey drive (a rare treat for him, especially since he was the one who'd landed us both in the shit in the first place...).

Clearly behind my diligent, academic, corporate exterior, there is an inner rebel just waiting to break out and recklessly abscond from reality to live by a combination of my wits / petty crime etc - until then though it's filling in my Annual Performance Plan this afternoon and back to work on Monday... Ho hum...

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

In one of my earliest entries on recurrent dreams, I mentioned that I frequently dream of moving into some seemingly fantastic new flat in Prague, only to later regret the rashness of my decision and realize that I had it better back at the old place after all. With half my colleagues simultaneously moving apartments in real life at the moment, however, it’s probably of no surprise really that the theme of domestic relocation has now once again cropped up in my dreams, though last night with a distinct break from the usual course of events so far…

Generally in such dreams, I find myself randomly moving into a new flat that initially catches my interest, only to later realize that my old one was much better / cheaper / closer to work etc, and that in my hurry to relocate I’ve actually forgotten to find someone to take over the old lease… In last night’s version of the dream, however, I actually took the time to stop and think about the advantages and disadvantages of a prospective move to a potential new flat – a genuine dream first in my recollection... On the one hand, the new flat was tantalizingly close to my office (thereby saving me the tedious twice daily commute), was located in the vibrant, upmarket area of Vinohradý (as opposed to my current neighbourhood of down-and-dirty Holešovice), and even included an actual proper double bed (a definite step-up from my distinctly less than comfortable IKEA fold-out sofa-bed now). On the other hand, the kitchette was crap compared to my current set-up, the flat was situated right above a noisy restaurant / bar, and the two current British tenants (one of whom was afflicted with a distinct squint) I later found out were attempting to illegally sublet the flat to me against the wishes of the actual in absentia owner, who in the event turned out to be none other than recent political victor (of sorts), David Cameron. Deciding that I probably didn’t want to get myself embroiled in some drawn-out property dispute with the current British PM (especially when I was 100% banking for him the other week), for the first time in all my multiple relocation dreams, I finally decided I actually had it pretty good already where I lived already (after all, the commute to work only takes a mere twenty minutes door-to-door, and – bar all the junkies / alcoholics who inhabit the park in front of my house - Holešovice isn’t all that much of a shithole really), and so headed back contentedly to my little sofa-bed studio again on the trusty number five tram.

According to the internet, dreams of moving house have the following interpretations:

Dreams about moving house often mean you are moving through differing aspects of your personality. Your personality is seen to be 'where you live' and so to move house speaks of changes in lifestyle relating to personality, thoughts, beliefs. You are evolving - moving into a higher or different area of growth where changes are big and full of meaning.

Houses in dreams often represent parts of your mind or personality. Perhaps your dream simply reflects your awareness of different parts of your personality. Maybe you have been moving from one part of yourself to another, trying out different aspects of yourself. Maybe you are trying to decide who you really are?

If you are moving a house in your dream, it expresses your feeling that you want to be in a new environment or want to change yourself. If you’re moving in to a gorgeous house, it implies that you’ll be able to find a suitable environment for you and that you will have a chance to change and become a new person.

To me it seems pretty obvious really that such relocation dreams are just a reflection of my current, unresolved state of inner conflict between old and new in terms of both geographical location and future professional path, with the fickleness I display towards alternate abodes in such dreams simply a nocturnal expression of the uncertainty I feel towards pretty much everything in my life right about now (Prague? UK? Law? HR? Parisian MBA? etc etc) and the fear of making a rash or wrong decision I later come to regret. That the new flat in question often turns out to be invasively noisy / unexpectedly shared / or initially unbeknownst to me doubling up as a café-bar by night, I can’t help but feel indicates a deep-seated subconscious fear of giving up the privacy of my current little Holešovice bubble and sharing not just my space, but also my emotions and possibly whole bloody rest of my life with (if all goes to current plan) my one-day cohabiting other half - not an easy thing for someone so inherently private and accustomed to one’s own space (read “borderline hermit” / “emotional cripple” – both traits unfortunately genetically inherited) to contemplate really…

All food for thought for the time being maybe, but until then am sticking with good old inertia in the face of indecision (not to mention still potentially impending global economic meltdown), and will simply play it safe and stick with what I know for now!!! Saves on the hassle of moving at any rate ;-)))

Oops, I (Subconsciously) Did It Again...

So, I think it's fair to say that now that spring has sprung at last, I've suddenly been going out a lot more with friends old and new of late (hooray for expats.cz!), and yes, admittedly on one or two of those occasions have ended up imbibing one too many glasses of vino than is probably good for me at any one time... Nevertheless, no matter how many glasses / bottles I’ve inadvertently consumed, without exception on each of these occasions I have somehow still always managed to totter faithfully back home again afterwards to Skype chat with my beloved long-distance boyfriend at the end of the night, with the conversation generally ending up with me drunkenly declaring my love for him repeatedly / increasingly emphatically / oh, let's face it - utterly undignifiedly down the phone, before finally collapsing into an alcohol-induced sleep that would rival the dead (most of the time while still on the line with headphones still on head).

All of which is pretty much a long drawn-out way of illustrating that I am and have always been one of life's old-fashioned, traditional types, who would not lightly cheat on my partner or in any way betray the mutual trust that is so vital in successfully maintaining a long-distance relationship over a two year period – and that’s a given, no matter how much alcohol has been consumed over the course of the evening or whatever alternative aspirations may be harboured on the part of any ephemeral male dining / drinking partner...

Which makes it all the more surprising really that, despite all of the above, I seem to be dreaming of unintended infidelity on my part with increasing frequency these days - not in the sense of actually committing the act in question, you understand, but rather experiencing the horrified realization of what I've done only later, and being instantly consumed by overwhelming guilt and remorse for my unintentional and (in the details) unrecollected lapse. I only bring up the subject now, however, as I had a particularly striking dream in this respect the other night, waking (or so I thought) in a state of unadulterated relief that it had all been a dream and I’d not been unfaithful after all, only then to suddenly scream out at the sight of a recent expats acquaintance emerging from the heap of spare blankets and pillows I keep stored in the corner of my little one-room studio apartment. Only having hazy memories in the dream of how I'd gotten home the night before, I couldn't be sure whether this unexpected visitor had, perhaps, simply escorted me back to the apartment and out of chivalry just stopped over on the spare duvets to make sure I didn't choke on my own vomit or something (not that I would ever get this paralytic in real life, btw), or whether the wicked deed had really been done – and in the event I did actually feel genuinely torn as to whether or not I really wanted to know… Strangely enough, this process of apparent waking and sudden realization that I wasn’t alone in the apartment repeated another good two or three times before I finally woke up "properly" to the sound of my alarm clock ringing (unfortunately this time still with residual hangover for real…).

Does this sudden crop of inadvertent adultery dreams mean that I now subconsciously want to slut it all about Prague…? Or does it reflect a waking fear of acting out of character / control once I’ve had a few…? Or is it simply a variation on the usual round of anxiety dreams (missing flights, fucking up at work, relapsing on the smoking front etc etc)? Interpretations on the internet (read "mostly bullshit") varied from wanton sexual deviancy to unfilled personal ambitions blah blah blah, but in my heart of hearts I actually believe such dreams mean precisely the opposite – namely that the horror and guilt experienced on realization at having inadvertently fucked up what has until now been a truly good and trust-based relationship only goes to show how much I value what I currently have and by no means would ever want to jeopardize. Which, thinking about it, makes all the more sense when I consider the all-consuming guilt and repentance I typically experience in waking life on the regrettably frequent occasions I’ve been unjustifiably stroppy, irrational, demanding or just plain bitchy (pretty much all occuring when blood sugar low, but still…) towards my eternally patient and tolerant other half – to me it seems pretty much self-evident that these dreams are simply a reflection of my very real insecurity that, even with the best will in the world, David won’t put up with my involuntary / hunger-induced belligerence forever, and this apparent ever-lasting patience with me may one day run out…

So, if you’re reading this babe, to sum it up - if I dream of accidental infidelity with the gorgeous Robert Pattinson, it’s only because I really only love you… Oh, and please don't dump me because I'm a mardy cow sometimes!!! ;-)))

Coming Soon to a Movie Theatre Near You...

Well, if I'd been worried that my last few nights had been uncharacteristically dream free (or at least forgotten), then last night has definitely put paid to any doubts in that respect, as my subconscious came up with a whole host of weird and wonderful episodes over the course of an epic 12 hour sleep...

Of these, the most in-depth dream was about a film called 'The Black Dot', which played out coherently in my mind with all the typical plot twists and turns of a real-life Hollywood movie. To give a brief synopsis, the film was set in an aspiring black American household (not quite living in the projects, but not too far off), in which a struggling single mother was raising two girls age 5 and 15 whilst studying for a Masters and PhD in Neuroscience at the same time. The father (in flashbacks revealed to have been a hard-working family man working long hours as a coach driver to provide for his wife and children) had died of leukemia some years before, and in her grief the mother had shorn both her and her children's heads as an expression of life-long solidarity with their poor dead cancer-stricken father. However, as the film went on, via various flashbacks, leaps in perspective, and narrative juxtaposition, this initial wholesome appearance was shown to be more and more an invented self-delusion of the mother herself to avoid having to confront the far more seedy reality that had previously constituted her family life... Bit by bit it was revealed that while her husband had indeed been a coach driver, this had been only as a front to hide his main role as drug-dealing kingpin, and that rather than having been a devoted family man, he had actually been planning to shoot through on them to evade the law men who'd increasingly been on his trail... Somehow the mother intercepted his attempt to flee, however, her intervention leading to the husband shooting a policeman and trying to drive off with the cops in hot pursuit, with the wife clinging desperately to the side of the vehicle to keep him from leaving them. Within seconds she inevitably lost her grip, however, hitting the tarmac with such force that it caused a sudden near-death experience, propelling her at high speed down the stereotypical tunnel of light, before everything suddenly folded in on itself just like a television turning itself off - ending in the temporary suspension of that little black dot in the middle. In a dramatic flashback of twists and turns, at the last minute of the film everything hitherto - from the shaving of heads to the obsessive study of neuroscience - was seen as a result of the mother's delusional attempt to block out reality and instead focus on her elusive search for the one thing that she felt would answer all her questions - the rediscovery and embrace of that "dying of the light" little black dot. Hmmm think I have the making of a potential blockbuster on my hands here - Spielberg and co, am open to negotiations!!! :-))

Apart from pulling an entire end-to-end psychological thriller seemingly out of my arse, other shorter, less coherent (and sadly also considerable less dramatic) dreams of last night include:

• Going to a supermarket in my old home town, filling my shopping basket with various boxes of chocolate, bumping into two old school friends at the checkout, and then - later regretting my uncharacteristically greedy purchases - offloading a bunch of Smarties on to my work team, who collectively will typically devour any type of confectionary put in front of them with the speed of a hoard of hungry locusts descending upon a cornfield.
• My boss (in between munching handfuls of Smarties) giving me a project to see how dream management could impact the working of the team, but after several nights' attempts concluding that dreams only ever present options and not solutions (though I did experience one rare moment of dream lucidity whilst liaising with the Customer Service team in Brno).
• Having a colleague and an old friend as guests in my old UK house and offering them Ricicles and Crunchy Nut Cornflakes for breakfast, but when opening the fridge having all the ice from the overhead freezer rain out on my head.
• Inviting my parents as my guests to a formal banquet, only to find to my embarrassment I was only supposed to be there in the first place as wait staff, and only got to shovel down bites of all the posh nosh in between courses.
• Attempting to strangle one particular girl who called me names in primary school, but who I couldn't bring myself to insult back at the time because she had been off school for months with social anxiety or something and I might inadvertently effect a relapse... manipulative little bitch.
• David and I getting ourselves arrested in Holland for drug taking (apart from alcohol not a very likely holiday pasttime for either of us) and other various unmentionable misdemeanours.

Hopefully will carry on this renewed burst of productivity (not to mention land a multi-million dollar movie deal!!) in the next few days and nights to come!

More Trouble with the Law...

Yet another arrest last night for an unintentional transgression, as I unexpectedly found myself getting arrested for forgetting to pay for some jewellery in Palladium mall. Unsurprisingly, I was completely and utterly terrified at the prospect of criminal prosecution and my work finding out, and kept vainly trying to convince the security staff that I was indeed a model citizen with an unblemished criminal / academic / professional record, even working myself in online crime prevention, but no-one there spoke English well enough to understand me properly. Thankfully I woke up pretty quickly though when I saw the unsympathetic Czech security guard snap on the old cavity search rubber glove...

Apart from falling foul of Czech law enforcement, other quickie dreams of the last couple of nights include:

• Inventing a flying boogie board and going on a hedonistic aerial joyride with my (non-existent) sister and partner in crime.
• Forming a really strong, protective attachment to the precocious baby daughter of my aunt, who despite being only a few months old was already self-aware, able to basically converse, and loved me genuinely back (this theme is starting to become worryingly recurrent...).
• Going on a school trip to the zoo with the Grange Hill class of '86, in the process spotting Rolly stealing all the chocolate from tuck shop and getting myself embroiled in a heated debate on 1980's racial politics with one of the more militant black boys.
• Sitting in the passenger seat of one of Sir Alan "as sure as I've got a hole in my arse" Sugar's limos, and to my horror seeing a missile in the sky overhead, launched against Britain by Iran.
• Belatedly finding out that when as a child I was in a TV chat show with the guy from 'Peep Show', but somehow forgot all about it - the quirky "twist" of the show was that for its duration I apparently kept one foot emerged in a toilet.
• Body surfing in Thailand - wheeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

And that's pretty much it for the time being...

Too Much Time on the Internet...

A clear sign that I perhaps (ok, undeniably) spend far too many of my waking hours on the internet is last night's fairly bizarre dream on the theme of the world wide web and my own personal dedication to it...

Following on from the previous week's European and Asian nocturnal backdrops, this dream was set all the way down under in Australia, where the country just happened to be celebrating its National Day (not sure if they actually have one in real life, but for the purposes of this blog I suppose it doesn't really matter...). To mark the occasion, the country's royal family (i.e. the Brits - still officially in charge!) and a whole array of other Ozzie dignitaries / politicians etc were marching in parade down the capital's main thoroughfare and up the steps into Australia's parliament building, as the nation and its media looked on in admiration at the whole pomp and circumstance of the official ceremonies. It was at this point, however, that I launched my own planned intervention into the proceedings, swiftly circumventing the security barriers as the parade's final participants ascended the steps up to the seat of government and tagging myself on to the end - notably, dressed in a t-shirt with Facebook logos and imagery all over it and with the Facebook emblem daubed in face paint on both my cheeks (I believe the logic behind it was to somehow have the parade also represent all the many Facebook users Australia and the world...).

I was just congratulating myself at my successful attempt at promotional gate-crashing at the entrance, however, when a government security agent suddenly appeared and dragged me into one of the building's side rooms for interrogation as to what the hell I was playing at here. Suddenly my reasons for crashing the parade (i.e. to be seen spreading the Facebook love on television) seemed rather feeble, as it dawned on me that this was just the sort of ill-advised violation that could land you in jail under some obscure article of the Anti-Terrorist Act, or if not that end up getting me sacked from my job in online law enforcement for committing a televised offline security breach...

In the end though, I was lucky to get away with just a slap on the wrists, triumphantly heading right back to the office and straight on the internet to watch the ceremonies back on Youtube (luckily the television cameras had caught my good side) and see who out of my family and friends worldwide had seen me on the news after (answer = not many). I therefore attempted to prompt interest by updating my status to the deliberately provocative "Oops am in big trouble (obligatory smiley face)" - clear moral of the story (i.e. narcissistic Facebook addiction invariably leads to landing yourself in the shit sooner or later) patently not learnt then!!

Anyway, can't stop - have to check Hotmail / Facebook / dailymail.co.uk etc to see if there have been any dramatic (or otherwise) new developments in the time it's taken me to write this up... ;-)) Lol...

Colleagues and Countries

From France the other week to dreams about the Orient the last two nights, all of which for some reason involved nearly all my work colleagues in one way or another...

The first dream of three was set in China, where I had initially set forth with my dad and (younger than in reality) brother. We'd not been long into our trip, however, when at Beijing train station my dad and I decided to get on a train just to see what Chinese ones look like inside (after several real-life months spent in the country I do actually know this - like glorified cattletrucks). Just then though the train started moving, and we realised to our horror that we'd left my little brother (not the most experienced of travellers) lost and alone in the middle of one of the most teeming and disorientating metropolises on the planet. As soon as we were able, my dad and I got out at the next stop, but to our frustration couldn't seem to communicate to any of the Chinese locals present that we needed some kind, any kind of transportation (taxi, bus, private car etc) back to Beijing and my by now presumably freaking out little brother. At this point though the situation morphed, and I found myself on yet another train together with my Czech colleague and a bunch of other random people on some type of guided tour round China. Being a died-in-the-wool tour hater since practically birth (am not the sort of person who can realistically ever follow round a designated leader with a little red flag on a stick without going murderously insane), I decided pretty quickly to break away from the group, making my own way instead to the Yangtze River and Seven Gorges region, which on my last real-life trip I hadn't been able to fit in and had always wanted to see. And so it was that not long afterwards I found myself blissfully solo on my third train of the dream, heading east and taking in a beautiful sunset from the window, only then to receive a call from David who unbeknownst to me had been on the initial tour as well and was cross with me for having struck out alone - not, apparently, for leaving the group, but for the way I had gone about it and things I'd said to people in the process. Given that I myself had no memory of actually separating off from the group in the first place, I was understandably suddenly struck with anxiety about what I'd actually said and done (in the same way as you might the morning after drinking too much...), as well as gutted to have inadvertently parted from David when we could have had such a great time travelling through China together. Woke up to the second, dawning realisation that I'd only gone and left my camera with the group as well and couldn't very well get back to them now... crap.

The next night I dreamt I arrived at work in the morning, where at the entrance my Swedish and Dutch colleagues were dropping some big hints about a huge surprise that awaited me at my desk. Sitting down at my place, I found a letter informing me that I'd recently passed a company-wide written examination, and along with a select set of other employees (including a Turkish colleague from my team who'd also received the same letter) would be setting off an all-expenses-paid week-long trip to Singapore and India the very next Monday!! Initial euphoria soon mingled with increasing scepticism as to the authenticity of this message, however, as I noticed the letter was written in multi-coloured jelly pen rather than being officially typed out; the business (like many others out there at the moment) is currently cost-cutting rather than funding any superfluous company jollies; I couldn't actually remember having taken any kind of significant test of late; and - most tellingly of all - my Swedish and Dutch colleagues were sniggering away together in the corner, presumably at the ingenuity of their (well meant) little prank on the two of us... In fact the more I thought about it, the more things as a whole looked slightly off, as I realised my office didn't look like it normally did (being housed in a treehouse rather than our normal shiny corporate surroundings) and instead of computers to work on we instead all had old-style, ink-and-blotter type school desks. Suspecting at this point I might very well be dreaming, I tried to conduct some of the lucid dream tests I'd recently read about on the internet, but none of them seemed to work - still, having pretty much cottoned on nevertheless by this point, I woke up anyway, much to my own frustration at not having succeeded in prolonging my lucidity beyond initial awareness...

The Middle East was the setting of my third and final dream, as myself and my Turkish and Australian colleagues somehow found ourselves in the middle of a traditional oriental souk, each attempting to levitate 200 crown notes off the ground by way of alchemy. Of the three of us, only my Turkish colleague had managed to get the hang of it so far, leaving me and my Australian colleague utterly befuddled by the whole affair. Nor was the process of elevation made any the easier in this case by having levitation teams from other companies (notably Exxon Mobile and Accenture - the two other main expat employers in Prague) all gleefully looking on and mocking our alchemical inadequacy either...

As ever, fuck knows what any of the above means - but either way, I am still of the opinion that our office reality is probably infinitely more surreal (in the nicest possible sense!) than my dream one at any rate....... ;-))